An Inevitable Verdict (or Perhaps Not). The Rhetoric of ‘Reasonable Doubt’ in Twelve Angry Men by Sidney Lumet

Twelve jurors find themselves ‘trapped’ in the deliberation room, struggling to reach a unanimous verdict on a case that should have been ‘easy’, until the stubborn insistence of one of them begins to reveal its full complexity by means of the rhetoric of ‘reasonable doubt’. With Twelve Angry Men, Sidney Lumet stages a courtroom drama that has set a benchmark in the genre (if only for making the workings of a jury visible) and that might appear to lend itself to an easy reading. Unless, just as in the film, one attempts to dig deeper.